Angels in Scripture: God Scorns the Hubris of the Fallen Angel
Angels in Scripture: God Scorns the Hubris of the Fallen Angel.
“The One who sits enthroned in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them… The wicked plot against the righteous; they snarl at them in defiance. But the Lord laughs, for He sees their day of judgment coming… They come out at night, snarling like vicious dogs as they prowl the streets. Listen to the filth that comes from their mouths, their words cut like swords. ‘After all, who can hear us?’ they sneer. For your part, Lord, you laugh at them.” (Psalm 2:4; Psalm 37:13; Psalm 59:6-8).
Lucifer the Fallen Angel. Satan violated the very purpose of his angelic existence, and is the very source of unrighteous hubris, the author of pride, conceit, arrogance and rebellion. This is the fallen angel who brought about evil, sin, and the fall of mankind. The Lord scoffs at the devil, for he is defeated and his doom is sealed.
HUBRIS: a Greek word that means excessive pride; exaggerated self-conceit; overwhelming self-confidence; sheer arrogance; in ancient Greece, hubris was a character flaw reflecting a defiance of the gods, when someone would foolishly or maliciously act against the divine order; someone with hubris always has a lack of self-awareness and won’t stop to examine his behavior or consider other actions; people with hubris are generally too full of themselves to question their motives or actions; people who are overcome with hubris eventually bring about their own downfall. As Rabbi Jonathon Sacks once wrote, “If Scripture is our guide, what makes God laugh is a person’s delusion of grandeur.”
Titles in Scripture for the Devil. One look at these titles and names given to the devil, and there can be no question about why he is slated for eternal damnation: the Father of Lies (John 8:44); the Adversary, Satan (1 Peter 5:8 and over 50 times in NT); the Ruler of Darkness (Eph. 6:12); the Accuser of the Brethren (Rev. 12:10); the Enemy (Matt. 13:39, Luke 10:18-19); the Slanderer, the Devil (given 38 times in NT); Ruler of the power of the air (Eph. 2:2); the King of Death (Heb. 2:14); Prince of this world (John 12:31); the Lord of the Flies, Beelzebub (Matt. 12:24); the Great Dragon (Rev. 12:9); the Ancient Serpent (Rev. 12:9, 2 Cor. 11:3); the Angel of the Bottomless Pit (Rev. 9:11); the Tempter (Matt.4:3); the false Angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14); the Roaring Lion (1 Peter 5:8); the Ruler of Demons (Matt. 12:24); the Evil One (Matt. 6:13); the Murderer (John 8:44); the Daystar and Son of the Morning, Lucifer (Isaiah 14:2); the Shining One, Lucifer (Isaiah 14:2); the Worthless One, Belial (Deut. 13:14, 1 Sam. 2:12, Ps. 18:4, Ps. 41:8); the Deceiver of the whole world (Rev. 12:9); the Destroyer, Apollyon (Rev. 9:11, Ps. 17:4, 1 Cor. 10:10)).
Character Description of the Devil. Does this look like the sort of person you would find trustworthy? Would you want to befriend or even become a casual acquaintance of this sort of person? Is this the sort of person you would ever invite into your life even to a minimum degree? The right answer is NO… He wants to assume the throne of the Most High God; he hates the truth; he wants to take life out of people and replace it with death; he accuses the innocent and slanders the godly; he tells nothing but lies; he loves to thwart the purposes of God and hinder the gospel; he loves to antagonize the followers of Jesus; he is poised to tempt those in their weak moments; he is always prowling for those who are vulnerable; he is a master of disguise; he counterfeits that which is good and perverts what is pure; he spawns evil through those who are fooled into following him; he would deceive the whole world if he could; he loves to mar and deface that which is beautiful; he loves to be smooth and alluring and convincing in his temptations; he overflows with ambition and pride; he wants to embrace all the glory due to God and desires for all to worship him alone; he will be accountable to no one but himself; he is the original trickster, sneaky, and plays dirty; he knows now that Jesus came into the world to destroy the works of the devil (1 John 3:8), and works extra hard to bring as many as he can down with him to his eternal doom.
Descriptions of the Devil in the Hebrew Bible: “How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, son of Dawn! How you are cut down to the ground! You said in your heart, ‘I will ascend to heaven; above the stars of God, I will set my throne on high; I will sit on the mount of assembly in the far reaches; I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High!” (Isaiah 14:12-15); “You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. You were in Eden, the garden of God… You were an anointed guardian angel. I placed you on the mountain of God; you were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, till unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian angel. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground.” (Ezekiel 28:12-17). These passages are referring in the immediate context to a fallen king, but the words are so cosmic and so extravagant, that scholars have interpreted them to refer to the evil spiritual force behind those fallen kings. Christians have always seen those passages in two ways, as a condemnation of those fallen kings of Babylon, and as a picture of the fall of Satan. The prideful ambition and evil designs of Satan are well-described in these passages.
Before Creation. Jesus was an eyewitness to Satan’s downfall: “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” (Luke 10:18). And now an astounding vision from John: “And another sign appeared in heaven; behold, a great fiery dragon… His tail drew a third of the stars of heaven and threw them down to the earth. And war broke out in heaven; Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.” (Rev. 12:3-4, 7-9).
In the Beginning. God created this magnificent world out of nothing but His power and wisdom. Then, out of love, God took dirt and water and sculpted Adam and Eve in His image. He gave them His breath of life, and then put them to work nurturing the Garden of Eden. God loved Adam and Eve, He was delighted with them, and He extended Himself into fellowship with them. God willingly established communion with humanity through Adam and Eve, like a painter who steps into His canvas and interacts with the characters in the painting. Adam and Eve didn’t fully realize how good they had it. God was their best friend, they lived in Paradise, and they had everything they could ever want or need. Then along came a snake.
The First Parents. Adam and Eve had it all, until they didn’t. They were made in innocence. They were not guilty of anything. They were innocent, but not perfect. They had the profound gift of free will, able to choose the right way or the wrong way, the good way or the bad way. Adam and Eve had no excuse for their moral failure. They should have seen the temptation coming a mile away. Maybe they had never had a conversation with a snake before, and were foolishly mesmerized by the interaction with the animal world. Maybe they were unaware that a truly evil fallen angel was disguised in this snake, and didn’t realize this being had the cunning of a genuine genius con man. And there was the snake, slithering in the very tree that was declared out of bounds for them by the Creator. Did Adam and Eve know they were talking with a demonic master who was the source of evil and death? Or did they blissfully walk right into this trap unawares? But there was no excuse. Our first parents knowingly broke communion with God, they were naively lured into disobedience. Satan lied, and Adam and Eve didn’t see through the deceit. They chose to believe Satan’s lie that “they will not surely die.” (Gen 3:4), even with their loving God’s words still ringing in their ears, “Of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat; for on the day that you eat of it, you shall surely die.” (Gen. 2:17). Sure enough, Adam and Eve died a spiritual death as they chewed the forbidden fruit. They separated themselves from their source of life.
Satan. The evil one. The fallen angel. The liar and deceiver. The accuser. We may never know why God allowed Satan to enter the Garden of Eden, but he certainly made his presence felt. He who was once a shining angel of light in the service of God lowered himself to enter a common snake, a lowly snake, slithering in a forbidden tree, trespassing in God’s creation. Satan disguised himself in a snake, and seduced the first humans to rebel against their Maker. And God’s world has been reeling ever since, until the presence of God’s Son.
Satan’s Three Deceptions. The three areas of temptations noted in 1 John 2:16 are the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. John here is echoing those three temptations in the Fall: the forbidden fruit was good for eating (the lust of the flesh), a delight to the eyes (the lust of the eyes), and they would become wiser (the pride of life). The devil deceived Adam and Eve through their fleshly appetite, through their love of beauty, and through the promise of wisdom. Satan was fiendishly tricky and brilliantly dishonest. He knew how to appeal to the weak spots of humanity, of Adam and Eve, and he used these weak spots to his full advantage.
Broken Trust in God. Satan succeeded in whispering words of insurrection, in convincing Eve and Adam to doubt God’s pure motives. Before Satan, they trusted in God’s goodness, they assumed that God wanted what was best for them. But what happened? Eve was beguiled into doubting God’s intentions when God laid down the law about the tree of knowledge and the fruit of that one particular tree. First, Eve was led to question God’s thinking. She was brought to the point of contradicting God, thinking that maybe God didn’t have their best interests in mind. She started thinking that maybe God doesn’t know what He’s doing. Then Eve elevated herself by going beyond His word of warning, desiring to see for herself why she should be limited by God in this way. Her prideful ambition at this point helped her to make that final step in disobeying God’s word. She allowed Satan to fool her into thinking she could become independent from God. She chose to desire forbidden knowledge instead of trusting in God’s knowledge. She wanted that knowledge for herself. She fell for the oldest trick in the book… You can become your own god! Don’t trust God’s motives, Satan said, just defy His authority and become separate from Him and from all those rules. Don’t worry, you won’t die! God lied to you when He said that, said Satan. Hapless Adam, observing this interaction between Eve and the snake, could have intervened with a word of caution, but he didn’t. He simply took the forbidden fruit for himself, duplicating Eve’s sin. Adam and Eve, partners in crime. The first parents left us all something in their spiritual DNA, the tendency to repeat their monumental mistake of displacing God at the center. We humans in Adam and Eve’s extended family still have an essence of goodness, since we remain created in God’s image. But we are tainted and destined for spiritual death. Adam and Eve broke their trust in God’s character, and they died a horrific spiritual death. And that’s what we have inherited from our first parents.
The Enemy. In the parable of the weeds and the wheat (Matthew 13), notice that the evil sower only plants his bad seed after the good seed has been planted. He wants to produce a counterfeit to wreak havoc during the growing season, and bring confusion to what is good and what is evil. “Falsehood comes in after truth; after the prophets came false prophets; after Christ will come the Anti-Christ. The devil fashions falsehood and heresy to resemble the true Faith.” (Orthodox Study Bible).
“When you come into the land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not learn to follow the abominations of those nations. There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, or one who practices witchcraft, or a soothsayer, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who conjures spells, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead. For all who do these things are an abomination to the Lord, and because of these abominations the Lord your God drives them out from before you.” (Deuteronomy 18:9-12).
“Don’t Let the Devil Ride.” This classic gospel blues song pictures each of us going along on our life journey in a car. Suddenly we see a hitchhiker on the side of the road trying to flag us down to get a ride. Rev. Mays says that is what the devil is always trying to do… Getting us to let him into our life, where he will relentlessly try to take over our life till all we have are the flames of hell. The devil is never content to just sit in the passenger seat. So don’t even get started with the devil. Don’t even let him into your car by doing things you know you shouldn’t be doing. That’s the same as opening your car door and letting him in, whether we’re talking about the Ouija Board, an After-School Satan Club, or becoming infatuated with movies or television programs that have satanic themes. Here are the lyrics, and they are worth remembering, to say the least.
“Don’t let the devil ride, don’t let the devil ride. Oh if you let him ride, he’ll ask if he can drive; Don’t let him ride.
Don’t let him flag you down, don’t let him flag you down. If you let him flag you down, he’ll turn your soul around. Don’t let him ride.
Don’t let him in your car, don’t let him in your car. If you let him in your car, he’ll take you way too far. Don’t let him ride.
Don’t let him call your name, don’t let him call your name. If you let him call your name, he’ll throw you in the flame. Don’t let him ride.
Don’t let him be your boss, don’t let him be your boss. If you let him be your boss, your soul will be lost. Don’t let him ride.
Don’t let him talk to you, don’t let him talk to you. If you let him talk to you, he’ll tell you what to do. Don’t let him ride.”
Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it. Don’t do it, don’t do it, don’t do it.
Neal Roberson – Don’t Let the Devil Ride (youtube.com)
Don’t Let the Devil Ride (youtube.com)
The Strong Man. In Luke 11:21, immediately after Jesus cast out the demons by the finger of God, the Enemy is described by Jesus as the “strong man.” In His mini-parable, Jesus tells us about this strong man who is guarding his house fully armed, and this strong man is at peace with his safety and protection. But then a stronger man shows up and overwhelms him, taking all the man’s armor in the process. So in this context, “we have a mere finger of God going against a full armed strong man, and the finger wins! God’s finger is more powerful than the devil! I’ll take my odds with Jesus!” (Carolyn Moore). We need to constantly remind ourselves when in spiritual warfare, that “He who is in you, the Holy Spirit, is far stronger than he who is in the world.” (1 John 4:4).
An Important Thought. “There are two equal and opposite errors into which we can fall regarding the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and to feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. The devils themselves are equally pleased by both errors and hail a materialist or a magician with the same delight.” (C. S. Lewis, the Preface to his book, The Screwtape Letters).
“Enough! How long will you defend the evil-doers? How long will show kindness to those who do wicked things? You’re here to defend the defenseless, to give justice to the weak and fatherless, to maintain the rights of the oppressed and needy. Your job is to rescue the powerless and stand up for them, to deliver them from all who exploit them!” (Psalm 82:2-4).